Empire of the Black Sea by Duane W. Roller

Author:Duane W. Roller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Massacre

In 88 bc, Mithridates was stationed at Ephesos, making preparations for his attack on Rhodes. He sent a secret message to his satraps and the governors in the cities that he had conquered, ordering them thirty days later to kill all the Romans and Italians in their jurisdictions, including all freedmen of Italian birth and all their wives and children. They would remain unburied, and their property would be confiscated. He offered rewards to those who informed on ones in hiding, freedom to slaves who turned in their masters, and remission of half the debts to those who reported their creditors. Whatever the reason for such actions, it forever became a blot on Mithridates’s reputation and seriously damaged his image as a just and forgiving conqueror. Over a dozen ancient sources mention the event, all in strong condemnation. Obviously many of these reports are Roman and might be expected to react unfavorably, yet Greek sources are equally negative.52 Cicero, writing thirty years later, gave the first extant account, needless to say from the Roman point of view:

I would have you remember in your minds the Mithridatic War, and the horror of that cruel slaughter of every Roman citizen in every city simultaneously, the surrender of our praetors, the placing of their legates in chains, and almost the entire obliteration of all the memory of the name of Rome and the removal of any vestige of our rule from the Greek settlements and indeed from their records.53

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